Volume
2: The Doorway Papers Series

GENESIS AND EARLY MAN

Abstract: The
current interpretation of human fossil remains challenges the
biblical statements of man's origin. Yet the facts of these remains
cannot be simply rejected. An alternative interpretation is here
presented after examining what is known of man's early history,
his culture, his intelligence, the factors which determine the
shape of a skull and the validity of anthropological reconstructions
and the origin of language, that unique faculty possessed by
man alone. And a study of patterns of cultural behaviour help
us to understand some incidents in Scripture.

The discovery
of human fossil remains with grossly brutalized features in remote
areas of the world has been hailed as proof of man's animal ancestry
and that these ancestors are millions of years old. But this
poses a serious threat to Christian theology. What are we to
do with the Adam of Genesis? If the Adam and Eve of Genesis are
merely symbolic representatives of the first truly human beings,
then there is no problem with these fossil remains of millions
of years ago.
But if the Adam and Eve of Genesis
are the first truly human beings and really existed in
the historical sense that Genesis implies, then these remains
can't be our ancestors.
What, then, are we to do with these
human fossil remains which seem to challenge the biblical record
of man's early history at almost every point? To reject the evidence
is to commit intellectual suicide. Is there an alternative interpretation?
It is not necessary to assume that
everything that looks like an ancestor is an ancestor
-- it could be a descendant! And degeneration is as likely
as improvement. Taking Genesis as a true statement, this Paper
presents a reasonable, and satisfying, alternative interpretation
of the evidence of fossil remains.

PRIMITIVE CULTURES: A SECOND LOOK
AT THE PROBLEM OF THEIR HISTORICAL ORIGIN

Human history, far from
being characterized by progress from savage to barbarian
to civilized is in fact more frequently characterized by regression
from civilized to barbaric (albeit, refined at times) to savage.
This tendency to degeneration in spite of a high beginning is
documented in two chapters. Neither the evolution nor the
devolution of culture is automatic: the last chapter discusses
these determining factors.
The record of Genesis, rightly
understood, readily accounts not only for the sudden rise of
culture in the Middle East but also for the loss of that culture
as people moved out from this centre of high civilization.

Early man, we are
told, may have had a fair measure of animal cunning � otherwise
he would not have survived. But of the kind of intelligence we
associate with inventiveness and advacement of culture, he can
have had very little. For one thing, his brute features and small
cranial capacity are taken as evidence of low mentality: he looked
idiotic and therefore was idiotic. For another thing, the extreme
simplicity of his tools and artifacts is indication of a low
IQ.
But is intelligence to be measured
by looks and by standard of living? Only if evolutionary "progress"
from simple to complex, from animal to human, is assumed as fact.
This Paper discusses what criteria eestablishes intelligence,
what it is that makes man human � and presents evidence that
proves Stone Age man to be quite intelligent.
The biblical picture of early man
which shows him from the very beginning as not one bit less intelligent
than ourselves,] may, after all, be the true one.

It is assumed
that a human fossil skull which has wide jaws, a simian shelf,
thick brow ridges, a sloping forehead and small craium must be
proof of descent from apes and must be ancient. But the fact
is that instad of a nicely ordered series of fossils from prinitive
to modern types, we find reversals in which modern types precede
priimtive ones and ape-like ones are found in the very latest
geological strata! This makes modern man older than his forebears
which is ridiculous: but only if we insist that the prpimitive
types are his forebears.
Actually morphology (shape, stucture)
tells us far more about the environment and living habits than
about ancestry and age. This Paper is about the effects which
climate, diet, no cutlery, hormonal imbalance, disease, hardship
and isolation have upon the shape of a skull.
Then how do we explain the confusing
picture of fossil remains? It may be that these fossils are waifs
and strays who perished in the isolation and hardships encountered.
These fossil remains do not challenge
but rather find their explanation in the biblical record of the
early history of man.

Imagination
is wonderful � and can be useful. But does it always serve
the truth? Can one by studying any skull determine
whether the lips are full or think the beard and eyebrows thick
or sparse, the eyes lively or dull and vacant? But that is what
anthropologists do � and the older the skull is, the uglier
the features, the more stooped the posture, and the more vacant
the stare. The public is presented with pictorial reconstructions,
phyletic 'trees' out of a bunch of twigs, and sequences that
are not only unscientific but positively deceitful � as documented
here.
This Paper serves to warn the unwary.
For the imagination can, as Scripture says, quickly become "vain"
� and this is especially so when the biblical record about
man's nature and origin is rejected.

It is taken
for granted that the first man, being half-ape, 'spoke' by copying
them. Research shows that such grunts and cries cannot "evolve"
into cultured speech.
Perhaps, then, speech is instinctive,
since there is no people, however primitive, without a language.
Yet unless spoken to, one does not learn to speak �
as demonstrated by feral (wild) children and deaf-mutes. So who
spoke to Adam to teach him?
Apart from revelation, the origin
of language is a mystery. The first two chapters of Genesis not
only tell us who spoke first and how He taught
the first man, but the implications of the necessity of this
unique faculty in terms of his humanity and the purpose of his
very creation are profound.

LIGHT FROM OTHER FORMS OF CULTURAL
BEHAVIOUR
ON SOME INCIDENTS IN SCRIPTURE

It is almost
impossible to step out of one's own culture and see things from
the standpoint of another culture. Yet the attempt should be
made if we would understand what is right and wrong not only
from a cultural viewpoint but from God's.
The behaviour of some of the saints
in Scripture which, to us, seems shocking and quite improper
or at the least somewhat irrational, will to those of other cultures
seem quite proper and reasonable. While it seems to us that both
Abraham and Sarah acted quite improperly in the matter of Hagar,
to other cultures that was the right action to take. To some
cultures it makes perfect sense that Noah should curse his grandson
instead of his son who is the guilty party. Nor was Laban unfair:
Jacob ought to have known that the eldest daughter must be married
first. The light which these cameos in the study of cultural
behaviour casts upon some very familiar passages of Scripture
gives them a new meaning and fresh vitality.